Posted by Derek Yu
Fri, 02 May 2008 06:45:00 GMT
Yeah, torture motherfucka what?
From the mad minds behind Barkley, Shut up and Jam: Gaiden comes an all-new adventure – The Sewer Goblet: The Wu-Tang Clan and the Wu-Tang Baby! As the story goes, The Wizard stole the Wu-Tang Baby and fled into the sewers. You must send one of the Wu-Tang Clan into the dungeon and bring the baby back! Along the way you’ll tangle with Teknodwarfs, Baby Seals, and other unsavory characters.
The Sewer Goblet gets a lot of credit as the first rap-themed roguelike game, but doesn’t do too much to innovate the genre in general. Equip weapons, learn spells, manage your hunger (in TSG, every action costs hunger points), eat Wu-Tang snacks with randomized effects, etc. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing – it’s a solid dungeon crawl that’s easy to get into and somehow it never quite gets tiring bringing “da ruckus” as the Wu Tang Clan. Each member has his own special abilities that will aid you on your quest.
Now, all someone has to do is make a gory Bone Thugs-n-Harmony RPG set in an alternate reality Cleveland and I’ll be set!
(Source: Tim, via the IndieGames.com blog)
Posted in Unique / Bizarre, Roguelikes, Windows, Freeware | Tags TalesOfGamesStudios | 10 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:41:00 GMT
A developer known only as “Volumetric Pixel” has released Voxelstein 3d, a single level alpha release of his Wolfenstein 3d-inspired first person shooter. The game is built using Ken Silverman’s open source Voxlap engine. In case you haven’t guessed, it renders graphics using VOXELS (cubes) rather than flat polygons.
Voxelstein 3d is moderately entertaining as a tech demo and nice to look at, in an ugly sort of way. I definitely appreciate the way you can (and must) deform the walls, as you make your escape from the Nazi villa. But unfortunately, moving around in this voxel world feels very disorienting for me, and the combat is also less than satisfying (the eyes popping out is a nice touch, though).
It’s short, it’s voxelated, its Wolfenstein-ish! I’m interested in seeing if/how the game develops.
(Thanks, MisterX!)
Posted in Unique / Bizarre, FPS, Remakes, Windows, Freeware | 50 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Fri, 18 Apr 2008 06:36:00 GMT
Here’s a rather amusing experiment – The Naked Game is a simple, browser-based Pong reproduction that’s played by two computer AI’s. The twist is that its code is laid bare and the game allows the player to toggle each line on/off, altering the game’s mechanics in real time.
Unfortunately (in my opinion), the developer decided to cover the site with a bunch of very thinly-stretched “games as art” discussion… whether as a joke or what, it’s hard to say, but ultimately it just distracts from what is a pretty nifty idea.
I’d love to see this concept explored a bit more. It’d be kinda cool to build it into a multi-player game, where one person is playing and the other person is messing with the code in real time! Wouldn’t it?
(Source: Tim, via the IndieGames.com blog)
Posted in Unique / Bizarre, Browser Games, Games and Art | Tags StewartHogarth | 17 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:59:00 GMT
The basic idea behind the original Karoshi was completely counter-intuitive to most games: in every level you must FIND A WAY TO KILL YOURSELF. It was harder than it seemed!
In Karoshi 2.0, creator Jesse Venbrux extends that metaphor across 42 more levels, creating some of the most LOL-worthy and mind-bending puzzles I have ever seen. This is a true battle between Man and Game, and Game is using every trick up its sleeve. Prepare to have your head messed with (sometimes literally). I love it!
Karoshi 2.0 also comes with a level editor and a timed version of the original game (minus the irritating blood splatters on the screen that obscured the playfield).
(Source: Auntie Pixelante, the awesome new games blog from dessgeega)
Posted in Platformers, Unique / Bizarre, Highly Recommended, Windows, Freeware | Tags JesseVenbrux | 42 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:48:00 GMT
In Yume Nikki (or “Dream Diary”), you play a young girl who can delve into a bizarre, and sometimes extremely frightening, dreamworld in order to collect “effects” that can alter her appearance in the dream. Some of the effects also have abilities that can be used there. At (almost) any time, our heroine can wake herself up and return to her small, spartan apartment, where she can write in her diary (save), or play a simple minigame on the television.
I really like this game. The lack of dialogue or any “action” fills me with this strange sense of dread. I also like the contrast between the tiny apartment and the enormous dreamworld. And visually, the game really reminds me very much of Earthbound (especially Moonside!) and cactus, which is a pretty awesome and terrifying mix.
Download the English version of the game here (42 Mb), via Rapidshare. The download includes the RPGMaker runtime, as well as instructions on how to configure your computer’s language support to play the game. It’s a fairly painless process.
Thanks, Anarkex!
UPDATE: Tim to the rescue!
Mirror, via
WHFF.
Posted in RPG, Unique / Bizarre, Highly Recommended, Doujin | Tags Kikiyama | 32 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Sat, 05 Apr 2008 05:31:00 GMT
With so much uncertainty in the world today… sometimes a nice, straightforward video game is exactly what the doctor ordered.
(Source: dessgeega, via The Gamer’s Quarter forums)
Posted in Platformers, Unique / Bizarre, Browser Games | Tags Kian | 67 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:11:00 GMT
Nigoro / GR3 Project’s latest Flash game, Mekuri Master, puts you in the role of a panty-lovin’ pervert. Swing the mouse to lift up girls’ skirts as you run down the hall, raising your “Mekuri Meter” with every successful lift. When the meter gets full, transform into the “Mekuri Master,” who’s skills are so l33t that he can even upskirt female gangsters and wrinkled old teachers! It’s pervy fun (and not recommended to try in real life).
According to friend Shih Tzu, there’s some history behind this game:
See, according to Japanese Wikipedia, flipping up girls’ skirts, or skirt-mekuri, was a fad in Japanese schools among boys (and girls), particularly from the 1960s through the 1980s. This was supposedly Marilyn Monroe’s fault, or something. The level of societal concern over this varied depending on the age on the perpetrators and the exact nature of the incidents.
But honestly, the first person I thought of when I saw this game: Prometheus, aka Arne. Any chance of a remake that features super low-cut white cotton panties?
(Source: IndieGames.com)
Posted in Unique / Bizarre, Browser Games, Casual, Doujin | Tags NIGORO | 21 comments
Posted by Terry
Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:52:00 GMT
The creator of Which Way Adventure has another flash based Choose Your Own Adventure game out, entitled Get Lost. It seems to have been created as a promotional game of some sort for E4, but don’t let that put you off – if you liked the original, you’ll love this. It’s full of the same random, inexplicable humour and little details that made Which Way Adventure so much fun.
Check it out at E4.com, or at the author’s blog here.
Posted in Unique / Bizarre, Browser Games, Adventure | Tags ATriangleMorning | 28 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Sun, 30 Mar 2008 04:08:00 GMT
The Graveyard is a new game by Tale of Tales, creators of The Path, which was nominated for an IGF award this year (for visuals). In it, you play an old woman on a walk through the titular cemetary. Her destination is a small bench at the foot of a mausoleum inside.
Tale of Tales’ Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn are well-regarded for their unique approach to games. In the Graveyard, they ask us to contemplate the various themes at play while we move through the cemetery. It’s a worthwhile experiment and an interesting narrative, made all the better by the lush black and white visuals. There are little details in there that are really wonderful.
But unfortunately, I think the forced linearity and lack of direct control holds the experience back significantly. This is a case where, in my opinion, a little more “gaminess” would have actually let me appreciate The Graveyard better for what it is supposed to be (“interactive poetry,” or what have you). As it is, I feel that a movie might have conveyed the experience better, almost. Almost.
The full version of the game is $5 and adds the possibility that the old woman will die. It’s a minute change. But I was happy to pay it to support the developers. I think it’s pretty cool what they’re trying to do (even though I feel they haven’t gotten it quite right yet).
Posted in Unique / Bizarre, Macintosh, Games and Art, Windows | Tags TaleOfTales | 34 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Fri, 28 Mar 2008 06:13:00 GMT
I love the idea that there are these rogue game developers out there, working silently in their homes after dark, and using The Games Factory/MMF to make crude, bizarre, amazing B-Games just because they get a kick out of it. I also love that, thanks to the internet, I can find out about these games and then expose you to them (against your will)!
JinxTengu’s Revenge of the Sunfish (20 Mb, direct download) is a frightening, psychedelic experience that assaults your sense of good taste with its “terrible” graphics, grating sounds, jarring transitions, and lack of consistent game rules. Gross-out humor and ultraviolence abound, albeit in a cartoonish form. But the game is also strangely playable, which is, I believe, the hallmark of great B-Games (like Sexy Hiking, for example).
JinxTengu (real name: Jacob Buczynski) has a whole page of out-of-this-world games waiting for you to explore. The games are all quite varied. So if you find Revenge of the Sunfish too unintelligible, maybe try Seismic Death… a simple top-down shooter that lets you dig through walls.
Be sure to pick up cncs32.dll and put it in your “Windows/System32” folder if you’re having trouble running the games.
(Thanks a bunch, wourme!)
Posted in Unique / Bizarre, Windows, Freeware | Tags JinxTengu | 12 comments
